Speaker of the House of Representatives, Hon. Yakubu Dogara, has lamented that Nigeria’s education system was not tailored to train leaders but workers, saying that credible leadership has been the bane of the country’s development.

Dogara, who spoke in Lagos Sunday night when he received the Zik Leadership award for Public Service, noted that with patriotic leadership, Nigeria would overcome its challenges, according to a statement issued by his Special Adviser on Media and Public Affairs, Turaki Hassan.

Speaking further on the education system in Nigeria, Dogara said: “It was not established by the colonialists to train leaders, rather it was for training a workforce. It was meant for training people who would work to make them rich.”

While advising the government to begin to set up ivory towers, establish centres and institutes of leadership that will ingrain the culture of leadership in our young people, He called on the present crop of leaders to rise to the challenges and build a generation that will take over from them, sustain and even surpass their legacies.

He maintained that Nigeria’s founding fathers wanted to be seen as people who were not just leaders, but leaders of a country that had the needed population and resources.

He added: “They fought for the unity of this country. We may never be like them but we can strive to ensure that the ideals for which they fought and gave everything are replicated and sustained.

“What has been the problem with Nigeria is lack of leadership; if we have credible leadership that speaks to the challenges we face as a nation, there is no way that in spite of our challenges, we won't make progress.”

The Speaker noted that there are so many nations that are as diverse as Nigeria and used their diversity positively. He asked: “Why is it that they are making progress and we are not?” According to him, “If our founding fathers had gone back on their resolve to fight for us, we wouldn’t have had the nation that we call Nigeria today.”

Dogara argued that our leadership must be such that leads us to always overcome our fears and not yield to them, and that what will be at the centre of that leadership is justice because “justice is needed in building a civil society, and we must understand the workings of justice which is necessary in democracy. And then we have equality.”

To him, “If we establish both principles, there is no way Nigeria will not have progress. I don’t believe that the variety within Nigeria is a mistake, just as Nigeria is not a mistake. In a place where you find variety, God dwells there, so we don’t have any problem in this save for leadership. Unfortunately, we have been pursuing everything as a people except training leaders.”

•Photo shows Speaker Dogara.

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